[h3]Castle Town[/h3]
[b]The Temple of Time[/b]
[i]Inside the Dark World[/i]
[hr]
The Temple of Time. Once a holy place of worship to the goddesses, a place that held the most magnificent treasure of the realm and protected the gate to the Sacred Land. But now, by the very hands of the Hero that should have saved it, that gateway had been opened and allowed a king of thieves to steal away the very lifeblood of Hyrule. Now the Temple was a nest of darkness, a place where the denizens of the Dark World were birthed forth from the portal to join Ganon's armies. The Knight stepped through that same doorway, back into the world of light that had been thrown into a shadow nearly as black as that of the land he just left.

But Courage pulsed in his hand, brighter than ever. He felt its pull and followed it with trodding steps, his back hunched as if under an incredible burden. His arms hung loosely at his sides, giving his gait a predatory slink. The light, from windows high above, had a reddened, malicious tint to it, and the sheen of his blackened armor gave him a demonic aura under those crimson rays.

As he neared the entrance to the temple, two figures came into view. Their flesh, rotting and riddled with poisoned veins, was stretched tight--too tight, so tight that in places it tore--across their skeletons, which were twisted as if in agony. Their faces, too, were frozen in the gasp of suffering, their dried and cracked lips drawn tight over yellowing, chipped teeth. Only their eyes, occasionally glowing red, showed any signs of life. The two corpses, ReDead, stood guard over the temple and watched as the Knight slowly, determinedly, walked towards them.

Their orders were simply to stop anyone entering this place, and to direct those who would serve their Master, the Dark King, towards his castle. As the black knight approached, at first they thought him a Darknut, perhaps, or an Iron Knuckle. But when they saw that the crest of Hyrule still gleamed on his breast, they looked at each other in confusion. Then, one cast his seemingly empty eyes towards their fellow Dark Worlder.

"Screeeah?" it called. The Knight stopped and stood there, staring. The red light behind his own visor pulsed just once. Then he rose up a bit, his spine straightening.

"URRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"

In an instant he leaped across the room, his clawed grasp finding the ReDead's face before he slammed its skull into the stone wall behind it. With a crunch the rotten bones and flesh gave way, and black, stagnated blood with a foul stench splattered over the masonry. The other ReDead took a breath for its paralyzing scream, but the Knight's head snapped towards it and he flung the corpse of its comrade at it. As the two carcasses--one returned to death--tumbled head over heels, the Knight leaped into the air and came down on the second zombie's chest with both feet. Again a horrific crunch heralded the splash of dark ichor, and the Knight threw back his head like a wolf after a triumphant kill.

"GAAAAAAARRRAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"

He rushed down the steps, past the now-fetid baptismal pools and the dead shrubbery lining the front of the Temple. As he neared a Gossip Stone, a mysterious device which--for those who weren't Shiekah--was merely a magic timepiece, more ReDeads began to ascend the steps from the town below. They had heard the screams and come to see what was going on, and now as one pointed at the Knight and let out its terrifying screech, they began to swarm. In the distance, other screeches answered, the sounds echoing across the town as almost every ReDead in Castle Town received the signal.

The Knight was frozen by the paralyzing magic of the first ReDead's cry, but the muscles beneath his armor strained until it seemed they might burst. Then suddenly he was free again, shaking back and forth like a rabid animal. With another roar he dove forward to meet the monsters.